New Class/Race combinations and Lore

I think one of the things that sticks in some people's minds is not the new class/race combinations, but that they're all happening at once. If they had come fewer and far between then they may have been more readily accepted. But rapid developments in storylines do tend to happen in new expansions, and that is just the way it is.

Personally, I think they generally all sound pretty cool and am looking forward to rolling a new alt with one of the new combinations, or hopefully race changing one of my existing characters.

Q u o t e:
The problem that a lot of people (or at least me) have with these changes is not that there are changes, but that the changes are made because of the gameplay. It is one of the biggest no-no's in storytelling in games. You make a game that fits the story, you don't screw up your story just because you want to add some sort of feature. If you do that then you have misunderstood the whole purpose of storytelling.

Adding human hunters to the game is fine, since their lack of inclusion was based on gameplay, so it is really just correcting a mistake. However, suddenly changing the story because some higher ups thought it would be "cool" and "rebellious" (actual statements used at Blizzcon) to have Night Elf mages, just shows a lack of integrity from a storytelling standpoint. This whole thing smells of a board meeting where it was decided that we need new classes so people would reroll rather than canceling their subscriptions, and the lore writers were either too intimidated or too blinded by the light to stand up and tell their bosses no.

As a game developer and major fan of storytelling in games, it really irks me when a company chooses to go this direction with their game. Especially when it started out so well.

But again I feel what is really grating for some people is that there are so many new combinations at once. Because as we've stated already, these new combinations are based on storyline progression and not the other way around. We've had these evolutions in our playable race options planned for quite some time, so I think it is just that they're coming all at once that is making people raise an eye in suspicion -- because it is so clearly linked to opening up new possibilities for game play in our upcoming expansion.

And sure, it's quite obvious we are definitely wanting to open up some new combinations, and we don't see this as a bad thing. But the changes in terms of game play are indeed well rooted in lore and will be further explained through quests and other in-game text and events to highlight this even more.

Let's see how night elf society treats and adapts to having a few of their arcane wielding kind playable instead of quietly hidden away in Dire Maul, before we jump to conclusions on how wrong or right we feel it is from our perspective. The humans also do not like warlocks, but yet we didn't decide to not include the human warlocks just because some people might feel they don't fit with the human lore. Like Night Elf mages, human warlocks do exist and opening them up to being playable was, in my opinion at least, a cool idea and I feel pretty much the same about the new combinations coming in Cataclysm including the Night Elf mages.

Though personally I have my gleaming crocolisk eyes on those dwarven shaman... and I don't mean just for a tasty elemental flavoured snack... ;-)

Q u o t e:
gnomes that they've learned priest stuff from humans!

They cast priest spells, yet the North Fleet Medics of the Valiance Expedition in Howling Fjord and the Holdout Medics in Gnomeregan aren't priests...?